Uncle Monster wrote:
On Monday, June 22, 2015 at 7:34:11 PM UTC-5, Pat wrote:
I recently travelled to southern British Columbia, Canada. I visited
the Vancouver area as well as areas hundreds of miles to the east in
the mountains. While there, I noticed that high voltage transmission
lines (or, as they called there, "hydro lines") do not have ground
conductors.

Everywhere else I have been, transmission lines usually have one or
two sets of three phases hanging on insulators plus an additional one
or two lines attached directly to the tower structure usually at the
highest point. I always assumed they were for lightning protection.
Wikipedia seems to support that. Anyone know why are they not needed
in BC?

Pat

Back in the 80's I was working in a part of Alabamastan that had TVA
electrical service. A single high voltage conductor was strung pole to
pole in the rural areas and the power connection to the customer was
accomplished with a pole mounted transformer that was grounded at the
pole with the ground rod hooked to one terminal of the transformer. You
didn't want to cut the grounding conductor that was stapled to the pole.
In the urban areas where a neutral was run with the high voltage line,
copper thieves were stealing the #4 copper grounding conductor by cutting
it off the ground rod and as high up the pole as they could reach. I
walked a few blocks around my office and the copper was cut from every pole. o_O

[8~{} Uncle Ground Monster

There is one hv line feeding my street. Ground is the return path. The
transformer also has output center tap to ground. Same ground.

Greg

On Friday, June 26, 2015 at 12:28:03 AM UTC-4, Gz wrote:
Uncle Monster wrote:
On Monday, June 22, 2015 at 7:34:11 PM UTC-5, Pat wrote:
I recently travelled to southern British Columbia, Canada. I visited
the Vancouver area as well as areas hundreds of miles to the east in
the mountains. While there, I noticed that high voltage transmission
lines (or, as they called there, "hydro lines") do not have ground
conductors.

Everywhere else I have been, transmission lines usually have one or
two sets of three phases hanging on insulators plus an additional one
or two lines attached directly to the tower structure usually at the
highest point. I always assumed they were for lightning protection.
Wikipedia seems to support that. Anyone know why are they not needed
in BC?

Pat

Back in the 80's I was working in a part of Alabamastan that had TVA
electrical service. A single high voltage conductor was strung pole to
pole in the rural areas and the power connection to the customer was
accomplished with a pole mounted transformer that was grounded at the
pole with the ground rod hooked to one terminal of the transformer. You
didn't want to cut the grounding conductor that was stapled to the pole.
In the urban areas where a neutral was run with the high voltage line,
copper thieves were stealing the #4 copper grounding conductor by cutting
it off the ground rod and as high up the pole as they could reach. I
walked a few blocks around my office and the copper was cut from every pole. o_O

[8~{} Uncle Ground Monster

There is one hv line feeding my street. Ground is the return path. The
transformer also has output center tap to ground. Same ground.

Greg

IDK where you're located, but in the USA it's rare to use the earth
as the return current conductor. Given that you say "street", which
suggests an urban area, I would think it's extremely rare.

IDK where you're located, but in the USA it's rare to use the earth
as the return current conductor. Given that you say "street", which
suggests an urban area, I would think it's extremely rare.


It's not the same thing as you're discussing but earth return
is used in livestock fencing. Electric fence is pretty common in
rural areas. It's especially handy for temporary fencing. One common
place is corn fields after harvest. Turnips can be seeded into corn fields
during the growing season to give the critters more to munch on.

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